A WILD RIDE UP THE CUPBOARDS

Name: A WILD RIDE UP THE CUPBOARDS
Author: Ann Bauer
ISBN: 0-7432-6949-7

by Ann Bauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 6, 2005

Though without easy or pat explanations, Bauer’s world is rich in the often wrong-headed but always well-meaning choices her...

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A spare, demanding addition to the burgeoning genre that traces how a “problem” child destroys his well-meaning parents’ lives together.

Around age four, Edward stops talking and, except for occasional brief relapses into near normalcy, shows many symptoms of autism, although the specialists decide he is not specifically autistic. Edward’s mother, Rachel, and father, Jack, are distraught. Jack folds his failing construction business and the family moves back to Minneapolis, where Rachel’s parents live. Jack takes a job as a cop, and Rachel works part-time for a newspaper. Their younger son, Matt, shows signs of great intelligence, but Edward remains mute and painfully sleepless. Then, during a tonsillectomy, he sleeps while he’s anaesthetized and later is given codeine. Finally rested, he begins to behave more normally, but once the codeine wears off, he reverts to his usual zombie state. Desperate to find a way to help him sleep, Rachel persuades Jack to procure some marijuana, which they serve Edward as tea, but, when it doesn’t work, they stop. Their third child, Grace, is born around the same time that Rachel discovers that melatonin may help Edward sleep. Edward learns to write, and, just when their lives seem on track, Jack is fired for having bought the marijuana for Edward. After disappearing on a binge, he returns to take a job as a bank guard, and family life gets back on track. Jack proves himself gifted at working with Edward, and all the children thrive. But Edward tells a social worker about the old “tea” incident and Jack, charged with child abuse, disappears. What binds and tears the couple apart is that Rachel is driven to cure Edward at whatever cost, while Jack is willing to pay that cost.

Though without easy or pat explanations, Bauer’s world is rich in the often wrong-headed but always well-meaning choices her characters, like real people, make daily. An impressive debut.

Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2005

ISBN: 0-7432-6949-7

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Scribner

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2005

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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SUMMER ISLAND

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...

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Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.

Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.

Pub Date: March 1, 2001

ISBN: 0-609-60737-5

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.